


Deer Heart

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Transformation, Asgardian Magic, Daisy Has A Lot Of Feels, Emotional handjobs, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Loss of Bodily Autonomy, Love Confessions, Music, Nature, Realization, Romance, SKOULSON FANDOM INSIDE JOKES FOR THE WIN, even if he gets transformed into a deer, everybody loves Coulson, it's all Fitz's fault, mild body horror, not Fitz friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-24 06:13:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6144142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An accident in the lab transforms Coulson into a baby deer. Daisy has to take care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He might be a small deer now but Coulson still manages to look as annoyed with people as he did in his human form.

“I know this one,” Daisy offers. “He’s saying _damnit, Fitz, didn’t I tell you not to mess with Asgardian technology?_.”

The animal taps one hoof on the floor in agreement, clearly frustrated.

Now that she has stopped quietly panicking - at least Coulson is alive, the accident didn’t kill him, she has to start with that and hope everything else can be fixed - Daisy tries to offer a calm exterior.

Because no one else seems to.

The whole team has surrounded him now. Now that there is no doubt that the little deer in the middle of the destroyed lab is, indeed, Director Coulson.

“Why is it so small…?” Fitz asks.

Coulson bares his teeth, meaning: “Fitz, stop talking,” Daisy translates without a second thought.

A sentiment she shares.

It’s not fair but she would just want to blame something for this.

May looks half horrified, half like she’s stopping herself from laughing hysterically. That would be bad, Daisy thinks. She’s only still wrapping her head around how terrified and _violated_ Coulson must be feeling right now. His whole body forcefully changed into something else. Daisy is fighting flashbacks very hard, to the point where she starts tasting that familiar bitter taste in her mouth. She can’t imagine how bad it can get for Coulson if he, on top of everything, feels embarrassed by the whole thing.

“It’s troubling how cute he looks,” Simmons lets out.

Daisy swears the deer _frowns_ at that. She is just as appalled as Coulson.

But everybody seems to have very specific concerns, besides the animal’s “cuteness”.

(It’s not cute, it’s horrible, Daisy can’t help but think. But she doesn’t say it. She’s not sure telling Coulson his appearance is horrible - not because it objectively is, but because it’s not him - would be better than telling he’s now _cute_ )

“Is this permanent?” 

“What do we feed him?”

“Why can't he speak? This is supposed to be magic, right?”

“But why is it so small?” (shut up Fitz)

“What do we _feed_ him?”

Daisy, she doesn’t care about the why or how, she just cares about fixing this. Immediately. For a moment she doesn’t even care about that; she sees the whole team surrounding Coulson and she sees Coulson - her Coulson - in the form of a small animal retreating, afraid and _cowering_ , looking smaller and smaller by the second.

“I think you’re overwhelming him, guys,” she says, stepping in front to Coulson so that people might stop crowding here. “Fitz and Simmons should start looking for a cure asap. Bobbi can help. And someone should tell people to clean this mess. Mack? You’re acting Director in the meantime.”

Coulson lets out an aggressive noise.

“Or not…?” she asks.

He makes the noise again.

“What the hell does that mean?” Hunter asks.

“He believes he can still carry out his role as Director,” Daisy says. Everybody falls silent. “Well, then.”

“We’re not going to let him, are we?” May asks, keeping her eyes on Daisy.

Daisy looks at the deer. In a second Coulson was robbed of his capacity to communicate, and most of his dignity. Not to mention the shock of his body becoming the body of an animal. If he needs to hang on to the ridiculous idea that he can still act as Director as a fawn then Daisy is not going to be the one to tell him otherwise.

“He can obviously make his wishes known, and we’re not in any imminent danger that requires him to make choices. If things get worse Mack will take over. In the meantime…”

“Am I missing something here?” a disbelieving Hunter asks. “He’s a deer. How can he be the Director? He’s a forest animal.”

Daisy crosses her arms.

“I believe we all have jobs to do?” she suggests.

 

+

 

It’s not as easy as it seems.

The brainstorming comes afterwards, but only after Simmons runs tests on him - he’s completely an actual deer, biologically, but he’s also not, there’s magic at hand, because he’s still Phil Coulson and understands everything that goes one around him perfectly. 

Daisy watches him charge and flip a medical tray over in frustration, before Simmons’ assistant can reduce him, worried he might injured himself, his body weaker than he is used to. Daisy thinks she is going to be sick; Coulson might have the eyes of a deer now but she can see the horror clearly in his eyes and it’s all his. Being transformed into this… thing. Unable to communicate with the people trying to help him. Coulson as a human is not one to break things (except that one time Daisy didn’t see but heard, and the memory of that noise somehow lingers on even now, long after Coulson seems to have started healing from it) but with his voice taken away - yeah, Daisy doesn’t blame him for wanting to break things. She knows what it’s like, to be a breaking-things kind of person for a while. She remembers.

He calms down easily and immediately, once he realizes he’s going to need sedation if he keeps it up. She wonders if she is afraid of that, of losing consciousness.

(She is afraid of that. Of watching him blink and the next moment he’s no longer in there, under the deer exterior.)

They are all gathered in the common area now and people are looking worried, finally, once the novelty of seeing their Director become a small forest animal has worn off and they realize how terrible the whole situation is.

Fitz is not allowed to be in the brainstorming session. He’s to do his thinking elsewhere, away from Coulson. For obvious motives.

The artifact was destroyed in the accident, so there’s that.

“I’ve sent a team to bring Doctor Jane Foster here,” May says. “She’s currently off-radar, it might take us a while.”

Daisy hopes she’s not on a trip to Asgard or something, Coulson can't wait that long. She has never met Jane Foster, actually, only heard and read about her, but if someone who isn’t Jemma can crack this it must be her. She hopes so. Plus they need someone Coulson trusts. The list for that is not that long and Daisy is glad it includes a brilliant astrophysicist who is also an expert on all things Asgardian.

“I think we should be looking at the magic,” Daisy says.

Jemma gives her a sympathetic look. “You still believe in magic?”

She frowns, frustrated at not being able to explain herself in something so vital. Now that time is probably vital, too.

“No, I mean. We should be looking into the meaning of this transformation,” she explains. “Why a deer? What does it mean? Do deers have a special meaning for Argardians? Maybe that’s the key.”

“Maybe it’s Coulson’s spirit animal,” Hunter comments.

Daisy and Coulson turn towards him at the same time.

“Well, for one thing, _spirit animal_ is Native American, and I don’t think you’re Native American,” she tells Hunter dryly. This is the kind of stuff she used to tear people to pieces on Reddit for. “And for another… spirit animal is Native American, this is Asgardian.”

Hunter seems about to protest but Mack punches his knee softly.

“What do you suggest?” Mack asks Daisy.

“Norse mythology,” she says. 

“It has worked for us before,” Jemma, more helpful, agrees.

“Maybe if we figure out why the artifact works how it works, we can reverse the process,” Daisy offers, more to convince herself than anything. She needs to believe this can be reversed ( _yours couldn’t be_ , a tiny voice in her head reminds her, and what if it’s the same for Coulson? what if he can never come back?). “We can at least do the research. Come on, guys, I used to this for a living.”

“You used to figure out why people got turned into animals for a living?” Hunter asks.

Daisy feels something ugly and red and burning bubbling in her stomach.

“No. I used to do research for a living.”

“I thought they didn’t pay you,” Bobbi comments, like this is a freaking comedy duo she has going on with Hunter.

“This is not a joke,” she says, both low and terrifyingly loud it seems, because everybody quietens down.

“We know,” Mack says, giving her a sobering look. “We’re just trying to help the best we can.”

She knows this.

She needs to stop acting like she’s the only person in the room who cares for Coulson (sometimes she forgets she’s not). The only one who’s afraid of what might happen to him.

( _What’s going to happen to him?_ )

“I’m sorry,” she says. She looks back at Coulson, hating the fact that she has to look down on him because he’s so short now. “I just need a moment.”

She stands up and leaves the room.

She’s not sure where she is going - she should probably be working on the problem, on helping Coulson like everyone else. She doesn’t get far. She stops in the middle of the hallways, resting one hand on the wall like she is trying to find balance. More like she is trying to reassure herself that the world is still solid. It was when she woke up this morning. What happened to that?

She hears the strangest steps behind her.

When she turns around for a moment it’s like being in a dream. A small, young fawn walking through the corridors of a SHIELD base. It makes no sense.

Not a dream, though. A nightmare.

“Coulson,” she says. 

He gets closer, carefully, looking at her and she can discern worry. It looks exactly like Coulson’s worry to her. She needs to gets used to the idea. This is Coulson. Underneath that exterior he’s reacting to things they way Coulson would react. What would Coulson do if he saw her storming out of the room, visibly upset? He would _follow her_.

“I’m okay,” she tells him, but her voice sounds horrible even to her.

The deer gets closer, tentatively, and brushes his nose (is it called a nose when it’s a deer? she’s a city girl, she has no idea of animal terminology) against Daisy’s leg. It’s the first time the deer touches her. It’s definitely weird but deep down it’s just Coulson trying to comfort her like he always does. The gesture - Daisy imagines it’s as if Coulson was squeezing her arm in encouragement. If she looks at it like that it’s nice. She can feel the warmth of his nose pressed against her. Even in his predicament Coulson still manages to make her feel better.

“I’m fine,” she repeats. “Thanks.”

Coulson steps back.

He is so small. Daisy imagined forest animals were bigger. He looks hopelessly tiny.

“Hey,” she says. “You probably shouldn’t go places unaccompanied. We don’t know what might happen with your… your transformation.”

The expression on the animal’s face ( _it’s not an animal_ Daisy reminds herself, _it’s Coulson, that hasn’t changed_ ) is one of total humiliation.

“I’m sorry, I - I guess I’m not helping… I’m just…”

 _I’m scared_ she thinks.

She almost admits it - even though it’s selfish, even though he doesn’t need this - but then she sees Mack walking towards them.

“Hey,” he tells them both.

Daisy smiles. “Sorry, I just - we just needed a breather.”

“Bobbi and Hunter are already on the whole Norse myth stuff,” Mack says. “They were just messing around. They do that.”

Daisy nods, feeling guilty for her freak-out.

Mack turns towards Coulson.

“Are you hungry, Director?”

 

+

 

She leaves Mack - bless Mack, bless Mack’s whole existence, she thinks - with Coulson, after they figured deers would eat pretty much anything, according to internet, including acorns, which Daisy is not sure they have in the Playground or what they are exactly.

It’s then when she discovers May is leaving for the weekend.

Daisy can’t believe her.

She follows her into her bunk as May packs in a hurry.

(She left Coulson with Mack. She hopes that’s a good idea. Mack is the only responsible one she can trust, the only one she can trust to treat Coulson with tact in his current state. Still, she doesn’t like leaving his side. She knows it’s probably messed up to be thinking like this but Coulson looks so tiny and _fragile_ , Daisy’s chest hurts think how easily he could get hurt as he is.)

“He needs you here,” she tells May. 

And Daisy needs her too. 

The other woman raises an eyebrow. “Believe me, he doesn’t want me here to witness all this mess.”

“How can you say that?”

Daisy has noticed that she could barely look at Coulson since the accident happened. She knows it’s hard, and she gets it, she really does, but… how must Coulson feel when even his oldest friend can’t look at him now that he’s… this thing? Maybe she’s missing something here.

May gives her a look of total weariness.

“Because I know Phil,” she replies. “We’ve known each other for decades. He’ll be more comfortable if I’m not around. And I'm not helping with the solution, anyway.”

She guesses there’s some kind of twisted logic to what May is saying (and she does know Coulson well, she should be able to trust her judgement when it comes to him), but Daisy doesn’t want to let go.

She looks down at May’s overnight bad, suddenly feeling completely alone in this, and thinking it’s unfair she should be worried about her own feelings when Coulson is… Coulson is...

“May, please, I’m terrified,” she admits. “What if we can’t fix this? What if he stays like this forever and we never get him back? What if he starts losing himself in there and just merges with the deer like in _Brave_?”

It’s been a couple of hours since Coulson had the accident and she hadn’t let herself form those thoughts in a clear manner (okay, maybe the Pixar reference wasn’t exactly clear). She hadn’t let herself consider the possibility.

(It could have been worse. He could be dead…

… it’s not something that brings her comfort anymore, once the initial scare passed.)

May walks up to her, straightening her posture and looking into Daisy’s eyes, letting her know she means it.

“It’s going to be just fine,” May reassures her. Daisy guesses she is really giving a pathetic vibe because May doesn’t do comforting, not in a straightforward way, in any case. “You’ll figure it out.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“It’s not just me,” May says. “Coulson always says that. That you’ll figure it out. He trusts you.”

May squeezes her arm. It feels vastly different than when she imagined Coulson doing it, when the deer brushed her leg. Daisy doesn’t mean to be unkind, but she can’t figure out why it’s so different.

“I’ll be a phone call away,” May continues. “And I’ll tell Andrew to call.”

A small shred of comfort reaches her upon hearing that.

“Andrew, yeah, it’ll be good for Coulson to talk to him,” she says, before she realizes. “Well, he can’t talk…”

“He can listen,” May says. “And you can talk to Andrew. You can listen and be there for Phil.”

Daisy swallows. "Okay," she says.

"You have to trust me on this," May repeats.. And May never repeats herself so - it must be important.

"I do," Daisy replies immediately, because the idea May might think otherwise is unbearable.

 

+

 

Joey tilts his head.

Coulson tilts his in return and if the situation wasn’t so dire Daisy would think he’s making fun of his junior agent.

( _Coulson’s humor_ she thinks suddenly. Is that gone? Will she hear him chuckle again, that soft unexpected noise he makes when something amuses him against his will? Like he does when Daisy says something silly? A world in which she will never hear that noise again, she should prepare herself for that.

Or probably she should stop being so freaking _dramatic_ because that’s not going to help Coulson at all.)

“Is he okay?” Joey asks.

Daisy appreciates the concern but…

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she tells Joey.

“Are you alright, sir?” he asks, in a painfully awkward and deferential voice. Daisy finds it touching, because Joey really means it. The deer stares at him and gives an unmistakable nod at the question. Joey’s face wrinkles with worry. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

The deer does the deer equivalent of nodding and it’s very Coulson-esque in essence, very solemn and heartfelt, and that bothers Daisy.

“He’s very-”

“Don’t say _cute_ ,” she warns Joey. Turning to Coulson, “You didn’t take it very well when Simmons said it.”

The deer looks apologetic.

Joey makes a gesture. He has “ _but look at it, he’s so cute_ ” tattooed all over his face. Daisy gets a bit angry. Not at Joey. But this is humiliating. She’s not sure why, but she has a flash of a memory, being picked on when she was a kid, by older, bigger girls at school, just because she came from the orphanage. No one is picking on Coulson for this but Daisy remembers the smallness of it all, how she would feel so impotent she’d end up crying.

“Not that I - I didn’t mean cuter than normally. Not that I… he’s my boss,” he says, like he’s offended at a question Daisy never asked.

Okay, wow, okay. Now she knows Joey’s type.

“Again, he’s right here,” she reminds him. “He can hear you perfectly. _Every_ word you’ve just said, Agent Gutierrez.”

It’s like Joey has totally forgotten but then he turns to Coulson. He’s completely composed now.

“I’m sorry, Director. Can we pretend this conversation never happened?”

Coulson replies by walking around the desk. And since he’s a tiny deer now they can’t see him behind it. Which Daisy thinks is the perfect answer to Joey’s question.

Well, that didn’t go too badly.

Daisy hadn’t predicted that on top of the physical problems of the Director of SHIELD becoming a tiny baby deer Coulson would have to deal with _all this_. She wishes she could spare him, hide him somewhere away until this all got resolved - she has to talk and think as if this is totally getting resolved, no doubt - but she doesn’t know how. 

“I’m sorry,” she says once Joey has left and she has walked around the desk.

Coulson looks to be _moping_ , which he never does in his human form but she will give the guy a break today.

Daisy sits in his Director’s chair, sighing. She feels like the last three hours have stretched into days. May has already left in one of the Quinjets but it will be a while until Andrew calls. She leans back on the chair and closes her eyes for a second, just a tiny small second.

(Part of her hopes when she opens them again Coulson is back to normal - his regular size and human body and Coulson-like clothes and his eyes. She misses his eyes. The deer’s eyes look the same but are not really the same, Daisy misses his uneven eyebrows and the worried creases all around his eyes. It’s not the same.)

She opens her eyes. Coulson is still a deer.

A small baby deer looking at her with the saddest look she’s ever seen.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats. “I know this must be hard specially for you.”

The deer moves his head and Daisy can read curiosity in the gesture. It’s Coulson’s gesture, it’s exactly like what he does when he is confused or surprised by something Daisy has said. She remembers it very well.

“Yeah, well, of course I know it’s specially upsetting to _you_ ,” she replies to the question Coulson would have made if he could talk. “You already had your body messed up once before. When you died and Fury brought you back against your desires. I’m glad he did but… losing your control over your body like that, and then the carving… it’s _unfair_ that it happens again.”

The deer bends its rear legs a moment, then steps back from Daisy, like he’s studying her. He looks a bit shocked. What did Coulson think, that she wouldn’t make that connection? She knows he doesn’t like thinking about his resurrection (or its consequences) and she gets that. Maybe it’s only natural to imagine no one else thinks about the crappy things done to him. But to be honest it’s the first thing Daisy thought about, once the team realized what had happened to their boss.

(That’s a lie.

It was the _second_ thing she thought about.

The first was her own transformation, the first thought was a memory of the fabric of the cocoon starting to crack and that first moment of awareness when she realized something had trapped her inside the _wrong_ body.)

“What am I supposed to do?” Daisy asks.

The deer stares back at her with those eyes that seem so much like Coulson’s in a way.

He looks as lost as she feels.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay this is still preparation, the actual fic starts next chapter XD

Jemma says it’s important to run some tests while he sleeps.

Daisy is just as reticent as Coulson looks but in the end they’re both overruled.

For some childish reason she had hoped things would go back to normal before the day ended, like a fairytale or something.

They had talked with Andrew in a conference call for a long time, and that was helpful (if not by giving them hope at least by showing them how to remain calm). But Daisy could tell Andrew was not comfortable with the conversation, that it hit a bit too close home, so she decided to to cut it close.

“Is this necessary?” she asks Jemma softly when Coulson agrees to be strapped to the gurney.

Jemma gives her a soft smile.

“We’ll trying to keep him safe,” she replies.

Daisy tries to silence the uneasiness in her chest and drumming in her ears, managing to smile back at Jemma, putting the rest in her capable hands.

“I’ll be right outside, okay?” she tells Coulson, patting his hide a moment.

“The poor thing looks so tired,” Simmons comments.

And she’s right, Coulson falls asleep right in front of her eyes. He just becomes a deer. Motion-less and with his eyes closed there’s nothing of Phil Coulson here, just a small, beautiful wild animal.

 

+

 

She doesn’t get any sleep that night.

She works, realizing there’s not much she can do (if she were a genius like Fitz and Simmons, if she were a Doctor Foster, if she were something other than a high school drop-out she could something more for Coulson than trying to track down previous instances of this kind of event, and she hates herself for it) but she keeps working through the night, constantly looking up to make sure Coulson is still there, looking through the glass of the lab and takes a few moments each time, watching the slight frame of the deer rise and fall with each breath. The animal looks content and undisturbed, the only thing startling is the fact that there’s a deer resting in SHIELD’s lab.

“I’m sorry, I’m a brute,” Hunter tells her, approaching silently like a good spy. Daisy must have been really out of it, because she doesn’t notice until he’s already by her side and looking at Coulson.

“Yes, you are,” Daisy says, going back to her table.

“I was just-”

“It’s fine.”

She only hopes he’ll extend this sort-of apology to Coulson when all this is over.

“He really does look like Coulson,” Hunter comments, staring at the deer.

Daisy doesn’t want to think about it too much, but he’s right of course. He’s not just a deer. It’s a perfect reflection of Coulson-ness in an intangible way. Maybe there’s a clue there, or maybe every last one of them is projecting and the deer there is just a deer. It’s late and she begins to question whether they have been communicating with Coulson at all, or just assuming his behavior had some meaning.

(But his eyes, they're the same. Not the same but _the same_. They're Coulson's eyes, she wouldn't mistake them for anyone else's. It's that kindness in them that first drawn her to him. The deer has that.)

“Did you find something?” she asks.

“Yes,” Hunter says. “There’s a lot of deer in mythology.” Daisy quirks her eyebrow. “But nothing of much use.”

He shows her his findings.

“I found this stuff about deers eating from Yggdrasill,” he says. “But I don’t know what that means.”

There’s four of them in the picture, eating the leaves of the tree.

“There’s this other thing about deers signifying _home_ for the Celts.”

Daisy thinks that at least they got that right.

“Then a whole lot of stuff about gods turning into deer to escape some danger,” Hunter adds, sounding frustrated. “Why would you want to turn into a deer? I’d choose a lynx. An Iberian lynx.”

“Deers look harmless, humble,” Daisy says. If you want to avoid detection a lynx is not a great choice. But something vulnerable and common, you could make yourself invisible.

Coulson had told her about Asgardian magic (not dwelling on the fact that it was what got him killed in the first place), maybe that’s how the artifact was meant to work. Coulson was right, when the team found it, that they didn’t know if it was something good or evil, so better leave it alone until they could figure that out. Maybe it was a form of protection, a way of hiding. Maybe Daisy really needs some sleep. But Simmons and Fitz are doing their best to reconstruct the thing in the first place, so they agree it must be the key to solving the problem.

Yet this is not like the blend of Asgardian magic Coulson told her about. This is not cloaking device - he literally became a deer.

“But Coulson is not a regular bloke,” she hears Hunter saying and she turns around. “Maybe we should think about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Kree blood, the scribbling on the walls?” Hunter offers. “He’s not just a normal guy getting hit by this Asgardian hocus pocus.”

“You mean, like it could have reacted badly because he has Kree blood in his body?”

She hadn’t even wanted to think about it, she guesses. She tries to forget very hard all that about Coulson, because then she goes down a very particular rabbit hole, about her influence and that of her kind on Coulson’s life. And it’s not a good influence at all.

Hunter shrugs.

“He once told he believed maybe he shouldn’t be here,” he says. “Because he had died before.”

Daisy blinks, throwing a sideways glance to the sleeping deer. “Coulson said that?”

“To be fair to the guy, it was a low point for him,” he tells Daisy, giving her a subtle - as subtle as Hunter can muster - smile. “You had disappeared without a trace and he was getting a bit dramatic about the whole thing.”

Daisy frowns. She’s still stuck on Coulson having ever said something of the sort. That he doesn’t deserve to be here, because he had already died. She wishes he could have talked to her about it, not _Hunter_. She doesn’t know much about the universe’s plans but she doesn’t care, she’s glad he didn’t fade away before they met. And if that was by some kind of miracle… well, that makes sense. It’s Coulson, that’s makes sense.

But she thinks back on the Kree blood. She’s pretty sure Simmons has already taken that into account but -

“Do you think this is some sort of... _punishment_?” she asks Hunter, but she’s looking at the small sleeping animal in front of him.

The only thing she remembers about deers is that time they studied Greek myths in school and there was this story of a guy seeing Artemis naked and being turned into a deer and mauled to death by his own hounds. But she doesn’t think it applies here.

Hunter touches her back.

“I think you have read way too much _Harry Potter_ ,” he says, ·and also that you need sleep.”

He takes the tablet out of her hands and Daisy is about to protest, looking back at Coulson through the glass.

“It’s okay,” he cuts her protests off before Daisy can utter them. “We can make you a bed right here in the lab, you freak.”

And Daisy is scared to fall asleep, in case something happens and she has no way of controlling it. But she also admits the perspective of shutting down her brain for a bit - a few minutes, maybe an hour, she promises - and just not having to deal.

 

+

 

Of course she has terrible nightmares later she can’t put into words and wouldn’t want to put into words if she could.

Nightmare which, blissfully, only leave the faintest trace of a memory when she wakes up, cold and panicked on a gurney.

Hunter’s research bleeds into her dreams in the most horrible way.

Memories of seeing Coulson carve deeply into the walls of the office, except this time it’s an Asgardian tree. Coulson coming out of the chrysalis. 

Coulson, scared and tiny and covered in fur, cornered by a pack of hounds.

 

+

 

“Can I leave him with you?” Bobbi asks, walking into the common room with a downcast Coulson in tow.

Daisy was on the couch, reading up on - yeah, deer research.

She bites her bottom lip. She’s not into people talking about him like he wasn’t in here, or like he can’t understand. Like he’s a baby.

(Or like he’s an animal. No, Daisy doesn’t want to think about this at all.)

“Wanna hang out?” Daisy says to Coulson, trying to put a light touch to the situation.

He looks like he’s agreeing.

Bobbi sighs in relief, massaging the back of her neck.

“I got cramps from having to bend down to talk to you,” Bobbi tell him.

“That’s your problem? That you have to bend down?” Daisy asks.

“I’m _very tall_.”

Daisy chuckles, shaking her head.

Coulson turns to Bobbi, they seem to exchange some kind of wordless message between them and then the woman waves both him and Daisy away and walks out of the room.

“You okay?” Daisy asks.

The deer looks unsure.

She admits she has missed him, even in this form. It’s not that she doesn’t trust the team but she still feels more at peace if she can see what’s going on with him.

He keeps craning his long neck, his gaze jumping from Daisy to the kitchen, like he needs something from her.

“Are you thirsty?” she asks. She’s read she should look out for that. Dehydration is very dangerous in animals. Coulson looks acquiescent. “Glass or bowl?”

The stern look, that hasn’t changed. Coulson has never needed many words to convey that. But he looks a bit helpless, too, and she sympathizes with that.

“Okay, glass.”

She grabs one of the bigger ones and fill it with water almost to the rim. She places it carefully on the floor besides the couch and the coffee table. She sits again

Coulson is careful, slow, dipping his red deer tongue in the water a moment then retreating, like he’s afraid he’s going to knock the glass over. It reminds Daisy of the first days with his prosthetic, how everyday simple stuff took Coulson a long time, like just holding a glass in his hand (it slipped many times before he got it right, a couple of broken glasses to clean up afterwards). He goes through this process four or five time, lapping at the surface of the water until he’s satisfied his thirst.

“This is so messed up,” Daisy says, looking at him.

Coulson has his resigned-agreement face on.

There’s work to do but she’s a bit happy he’s hanging out. Even in his current state Coulson’s presence soothes her. She wishes she could do something like that for him.

The deer lifts its head in the air slightly. It’s Coulson’s _what are you doing?_ glance. Daisy turns the tablet in her hands, to show him her progress. She wonders if in his deer state Coulson is still able to read. It seems like other than being unable to talk he possesses all his other faculty, why not this.

“I’m researching deer stuff,” she says, a bit embarrassed. “What they eat, the kind of climate they prefer… so we don’t accidentally kill you while we try to figure out how to fix this.”

The deer’s big black eyes fix on Daisy intently. He brushes his snout against her knee again. Daisy feels the hot, damp touch on her jeans. She knows that face, too. Well, she knows the human equivalent to this deer expression. It says _thank you_.

“You’re welcome,” she says. “Of course I was going to do everything I could to…”

Coulson drops his head, humbly, signalling how touched he is pretty well.

_We understand each other, even now_. Daisy looks at him, wondering.

Coulson looks back at her, very intently. It would feel weird, but it’s her and Coulson. 

Daisy reaches out her hand and leaves it lifted mid-air. Coulson steps forward, very cautiously (Daisy realizes how tiny and _precise_ the legs of a baby deer are) and touches the top of his head against Daisy’s palm. The gesture, even in an animal, shows a profound desire to be comforted. She holds her breath as she starts moving her hand to scrape her nails against him, because Coulson never asks her to comfort him.

This would be like running her fingers through Coulson’s hair if he were in his real form, it would be as if Daisy reached her hand to caress the top of his head. She’s never done that, and it feels weird to think about it like that. That it’s when Coulson has been transformed into a small animal they are this close. It makes her feel a bit sad, if she’s honest. But maybe it makes sense, she decides - maybe Coulson needs comfort now more than ever, that’s why he can finally ask, and reassurance.

“We’ll find a way to fix this, okay?” she tells him.

 

+

 

May leaving gives her an idea, actually.

She just needs to clear it with Mack first.

“So I’m back to being Director?” he asks, confused.

“Interim Director,” Daisy corrects because yeah, she knows that word.

“The Retreat?” he checks with her. “Are you sure about this?”

She has to be.

“I’m not helping here and Coulson doesn’t have to be around, it’s only making him feel more like a freak. He needs somewhere… not familiar.”

Mack paces around the office, pensive. He makes a good Director, but Daisy finds it too easy to convince him to do what she wants. 

“Fine,” he agrees, approving the papers. “But you need to be available at all times,” he warns. “We don’t know when we’ll find Doctor Foster. Bobbi has joined the search, which should cut the time by half but still…”

She lets her have one of the Quinjets and allocates some food to it, too.

“Thank you,” Daisy says.

“Have you told _him_ yet?” he asks, raising one eyebrow.

“I’m getting around that part,” she admits. She doesn’t like doing things behind Coulson’s back, but in this case she considers it’s the option that will cause him the least amount of stress. “I think it’s better if I get everything ready first.”

“He won’t like it,” Mack warns her with a shake of his head.

Daisy smiles. “No, he won’t,” she agrees. “He’ll want to be here helping. He’s not good at putting himself first.”

Mack makes an amused, low noise at the back of his throat. “Yeah, that sort of stuff seems to go around these days.”

She gets ready to leave the office.

“Daisy,” Mack calls. She turns around and he has a pretty unfamiliar expression on his face. Not just worry, that’s usual in Mack. Something else. “You sure you can handle this on your own?”

“I won’t be on my own,” she replies. “I think… I think it’s going to be better for Coulson, if it’s just _me and him_.”

 

+

 

Coulson, predictably, doesn’t like the idea.

When Daisy insists he looks afraid, like he thinks the team is going to physically take him away, force him, now that they can.

“If you don’t want to, we _won’t_ ,” Daisy assures him.

It kind of freaks her out, that he might think they would dimiss his wishes just because he's in this form.

Coulson approaches her, brushing his side against the chair where Daisy has left the mission specs, questioning.

“I figured it had to be The Retreat,” she tells him. “You are not some kind of problem that needs to be put away, swept under the rug, and - because I know you are thinking that - no, that’s not how I felt when I transformed and you brought me to the cabin. I know you were worried that’s how you made me feel, but it wasn’t.” She pauses. They have never talked about this before. In this case the fact he can’t interrupt her and berate himself might be an advantage. “I knew you left me there because you were trying to do what was best _for me_ , not because I was in the way.” She lowers herself from the desk. “Though I was, very much. In the way.”

She touches the deer’s hide for a moment. It’s soft and nice but she wishes she could be pressing her palm against the small of Coulson’s back like she wants to. So she withdraws the hand, frustrated, because she wants to communicate so much.

He still looks stubbornly displeased with her decision.

“Look you’re driving everybody crazy,” she says. The deer drops his head a bit. “It’s not really your fault. This whole situation is - it’s enough to make one crazy. But we can’t do anything until Doctor Foster gets here and starts running tests. And you’ll be… I think you’ll be more peaceful there.”

He doesn’t look convinced. An unconvinced little deer is pretty hard to stomach.

“Can you trust me?” she asks.

Maybe she’s taking advantage of him, because she knows Coulson would respond to this.

“Okay, then,” she decides. “We’re leaving the morning. And this time I’m going fishing.”

She thinks he might be smiling.


	3. Chapter 3

She keeps reading Hunter’s research in the Quinjet - it took them a bit to figure out how to transport such a small sized fawn in it, and Coulson agreed to be sedated for the trip. There’s some absurd story (no one is sure if it’s German or Japanese in origin) about a small deer who saw a human girl crying in the woods and the deer felt so much compassion for the human that he turned into a human boy so that he could help the girl with whatever was troubling her. But the enchantment didn’t last and he went back to his deer form. The girl let the deer live with her for the rest of their lives, though.

Daisy thinks this is a very sad story, she doesn’t want to think about it.

 

+

 

They’re both apprehensive and Daisy thinks that helps, like they’re in the same boat.

There’s still a bald spot on the woods where Daisy lost control of her powers once, but luckily it can’t be seen from the cabin. She looks out from the porch before they get in, at the place where the cut down trees must be. She put a man on a coma that time. She didn’t know coming back here after so long was going to bring back those feelings - the way her hands make a fist unconsciously, trying to keep her power trapped in case it spills. 

She feels a pressure on her right leg, startling her a bit.

Coulson is softly brushing his snout against her in encouragement. 

“It’s fine,” she says, guiltily, as she grabs the bags again and turns her back to the woods. She’s supposed to be here because she wants to make Coulson feel better, not the only way around.

The cabin has had a couple of maintenance visits but it smells stuffy anyway. Daisy leaves their bags by the couch and starts opening all the windows.

Coulson does a couple of turns around the room. His little hooves make such distinctive noise on the wooden floor. Daisy doesn’t want to think it’s cute but she’s a bit more relaxed now.

(And anyway, she thinks Coulson in his human form _is cute_ , so maybe this slip up is not that awful)

It’s a sunny day and the fact that they’re not underground and near the lab with a million tests waiting to be performed on Coulson helps, too.

“This was a good idea,” Daisy says.

Coulson looks skeptical.

“Hey, at least now I’ll get my marshmallow roasting time,” she tells him, because she has that fake optimist voice tone down to a science, she always was.

Coulson looks miserable. But at least he looks miserable in a calmer, quieter way. 

“Come on, let’s get outside,” she says, looking at the sunlight filtering through the window. “I know where the perimeter is, it’s safe.”

He still looks skeptical but he follows her out of the door.

 

+

 

It’s cool under the trees.

They have been walking in silence for a while now, checking the perimeter. Coulson goes slow, careful. In the Playground he struggled but at least it was familiar terrain, now he looks intently at the spot on the ground where he wants to plant his hoof before he actually moves while Daisy waits for him.

“Were you ever a country kid?” she asks.

Coulson shakes his head.

“No, I figured,” she says, smiling. “You look like a city boy to me. I always distrusted nature.”

She turns around and Coulson has stopped walking. He’s inspecting the fallen branch of a tree, sniffing. He lifts his head and his eyes have this little look of awe.

“Yeah, I guess now you have an amazing sense of smell. Is it nice?”

He looks back at her with a doubtful glare. 

“That’s okay,” she says. “You can enjoy that. It doesn’t make you…”

Daisy looks down at her hand, suddenly tensed. This one hits a bit too close home. Coulson seems to notice too, and be curious about it. It’s funny because now that he can’t talk Daisy feels compelled to, like it would be unfair to leave him in silence now, even about her private stuff.

She shrugs at him.

“I don’t know. Would I change my abilities to go back to normal? I don’t know. This is who I am supposed to mean but… if tomorrow someone offered me a cure I think I would at least hesitate. My powers allow me to protect people, do good, and that’s all I have ever wanted, but I’d be lying if I said some days I still wish I was my old me.”

She hasn’t thought about it in a long time. There was a moment, when they first met Roz and there was talk about a cure… it gave her vertigo because she knew deep down she didn’t want to go back to her old self, she didn’t belong there. But on the other hand it would have been _so easy_. No more the whole feeling a million bees inside, or worrying about losing control somehow and hurting people ( _tear continents apart_ , god, she remembers), no more knowing that deep down she’s meant to be just a weapon.

She has been too caught in her own thoughts (self pity, _stop it, Daisy_ , except sometimes it’s still _stop it, Skye_ ) and she hasn’t noticed Coulson was shaking slightly.

Daisy crouch by his side on the cold ground, feeling the distress in his vibrations. He must have a millions thoughts and emotions about this. And no way to convey them.

“But hey, this,” she says, touching the top of his front legs. “This is not what you are. It was an accident, and you’ll get back to who you are supposed to be.”

She feels him struggle with it and it’s unfair to ask this of him. Maybe he should be breaking things like he did in the lab.

But this is Coulson, and she knows him, so this makes more sense: he swallows the pain and slowly calms down.

 

+

 

She lets him on his own for a while, sensing he needs it.

He’s still within eyesight, walking and running on the patch of grass in front of the cabin, flexing his deer muscles. There’s nothing wrong in him being in awe of what he can do - it doesn’t mean he can’t go back to his body, it’s just a way of not getting stuck feeling miserable and impotent every second he’s confined like this. Coulson seems to understand that, entertaining himself by exploring the edge of the woods, smelling things, pressing his hooves to leave a mark on the soft damp ground. It might look childish but Daisy is relieved he has found a way to distract himself.

She sits on the wooden bench on the back of the cabin, watching Coulson for a while - she didn’t know deers could jump that high, and for a second it’s kind of magnificent. She’s never been around animals in her life (Miles invited her to ride horses - he was such a cliche - once but they were a bit imposing, she was a bit intimidated by them).

There’s nothing much she can research about the problem at hand (Hunter’s myths and fairytales only messed with her head) so she goes back to doing what she’d normally do back at the base if she had a break; continue reading up on stuff related to her powers. The sunlight has warmed the bench while they were taking that stroll and it’s such a nice spot here in the sun. Daisy starts understanding why people _might_ like nature. Not that these are the best of circumstances but Daisy can’t remember the last time she took a break.

She knows Coulson is only here because of his injury (she thinks about it as an injury, something he’ll _recover from_ ) but she wonders how nice it would feel if that wasn’t the case, if they just decided to come to the cabin to hang out and spend the evening in front of the fire. If they didn’t need an excuse, if they just decided to take a break together. 

Daisy goes back to her tablet, a bit sad in the knowledge that the only reason they are together here now it’s because Coulson suffered a terrible accident.

Still, it’s such a nice afternoon. She spreads her legs to the end of the bench, lazily skimming pages and pages of complex studies about sound waves.

Coulson even takes a small nap under the shade, in a bed of flowers. 

(There’s even some daisies there, which she thinks is kind of funny)

When he wakes up he looks disconcerted for a moment, craning his deer neck to look around, nervously, until his gaze finds Daisy sitting on the bench. He promptly trots along to her side. He struggles with climbing the steps, which shifts the mood for Daisy a bit - she remembers this is not a vacation and Coulson has been turned into a thing that can’t even do everyday gestures easily. But he seems more patient with it now, more undaunted by the obstacle, and she remembers Coulson is resilient. He takes his time with the stairs, but eventually he gets there. This must be, in a way, familiar to him (Daisy remembers broken glass).

She knows deer can’t smile but when Coulson gets to her side there’s a softness in his expression that feels very much like a smile.

Then curiosity, a little brush against her hand.

“This?” she asks, showing him her what she was reading in her tablet. "You want to know what I'm reading?"

The deer stares at her with deeo interest.

“It's kind of silly but - I have been trying hard to control my powers but… I need to know more about them. How they affect structure for example. Funny, I was never good at this stuff at school. And now here I am, nose buried in a textbook,” she says, chuckling a bit. “Well, a text-ebook.”

She’s a bit embarrassed, she’s not smart enough to get all this, but she figured a bit of knowledge wouldn’t hurt.

Coulson seems interested, though. She grabs him by the legs and helps him up the bench as she makes room for his tiny frame. It’s almost _nice_ , the way he quietly watches her read from her research and occasionally looks away and dozes off and they can just stay in silence, comfortably like this, until Daisy no longer feels the sunlight at her back.

 

+

 

When the sun sets they get inside the cabin.

Daisy feels a bit cheered up. Not sure why, maybe it’s the sun, all those vitamins she hardly gets from staying cooped up in the Playground. Maybe it’s that Coulson seems a lot more relaxed now than when they took that walk.

She notices him leaving muddy prints all over the floor.

“You should take a shower,” she tells him, seeing his legs covered in dry mud.

Coulson doesn’t react too well.

Daisy gets it but...

“Come on, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” she tells him. “If you were injured and couldn’t do it yourself you’d have no problem letting me help, right?”

He hesitates and Daisy knows it’s true, he’d probably have a problem if he were in his body too. She’s not sure this is the moment to examine that thought. There’s a bit of a staring contest to settle the matter (she’s in a staring contest with a deer who’s actually her boss whom she… and she thought her life was weird when she got earthquake powers). Daisy leads him to the bathroom, only helping him when he has to get inside the bathtub. She wants to give him as much autonomy as she can, not be overbearing even when he has to take his time.

When he finally stands there in the middle of it he looks extra small, worryingly so. Coulson is not a big man by any means (Daisy always liked that they were sort of on the same level, height-wise and it was easy to look him in the eyes) but it’s not just the being transformed into an animal, it’s such a drastic change. She still wonders why the hell a _baby_ deer and not a grown up stag.

She lowers the shower head and tries to do this as quickly as possible, to spare his dignity.

“Deer are supposed to like water,” she comments, to break the silence. The deer shivers slightly. “Crap, let me turn this up,” she apologizes as she figures out the temperature. “Let me know if this is hot enough.”

Coulson nods, avoiding her gaze.

It makes her feel pretty shitty but she goes on, squeezing soap out of the deer’s hair carefully. She’s never done this to another person, help them with something like this.

She imagines how it would be like doing this if Coulson was in his own body. Like she said, if he had been injured on the field and she was the only person there to help him he’d probably let her do this, even if reluctantly. Coulson is not a prude (Daisy is, but no one needs to know that). She hasn’t seen much of his body and she wonders what it would feel like if they were in this situation, properly, if she had to help him soap his hair and clean the sweat off his bare shoulder. This is probably not a good moment to be having those kinds of thoughts, even though Daisy has the nagging feeling she might have had them before.

She finishes washing Coulson (that’s not a phrase she ever thought she’d think) and she wraps his trembling frame in a towel. If she could abstract herself from how horrible and terrifying this whole business is this would be pretty cute, toweling a baby animal until his dry. But she can’t abstract herself from what it means and feeling Coulson’s bones under her touch, small and fragile, makes her feel a bit nauseous.

Coulson’s nose peeks from under the towel. He makes an odd noise.

“Are you laughing?” Daisy asks. The deer squirms in her hands. “I’m tickling you? Oh god sorry.”

She lets him go, the towel falling to the floor as Daisy herself sits on it. The deer loses balance and slips and stumbles forward into her hands.

Daisy laughs. “Okay, this is ridiculous.”

Coulson seems to agree. He looks comically solemn about it but not distressed.

Not embarrassed anymore.

Uh, Daisy thinks, satisfied with that development.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

The animal makes a low noise of agreement, walking out of the bathroom before her.

 

+

 

She has started the fire already - it’s get pretty cold at night here, she remembers - so that Coulson can finish drying off in front of it.

“I loaded up your favorite records on my ipod,” she tells him. “Do you want to listen to some music while I cook?”

Coulson walks to the middle of the room animatedly.

She picked mellow, nice stuff. She knows Coulson’s collection from that period where he let her use his office when he wasn’t there and Daisy explored his vinyl collection without even thinking about what she was doing. His collection, for the record (pun intended) is _madness_. Apparently the music Coulson likes has only two position: super romantic/super sad 1940s/50s jazz, and loud and angry 1970s punk. Daisy chose the former for their trip.

Daisy doesn’t know much about music but she knows Coulson likes Blossom Dearie _a lot_ (she can tell when a record has been well-cared-for but used frequently) so she puts on “Everything I’ve Got” because it sounds kind of upbeat, while she starts sorting out the food for tonight and tomorrow. 

She starts cutting a bunch of sweet potato into wedges when she notices Coulson approaching, his head lifted to get her attention.

He has an expression that clearly says _I’m sorry I can’t be of help_.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” she says, fixing herself a humble ham sandwich. “You do this for people all the time. When I couldn’t deal with my powers you took care of me. You made me that grilled cheese, remember? And you’re always doing little things for the team, noticing what they need. Even if people don’t realize what you're doing.”

It sometimes bothers her that people don’t notice. Well, they all love Coulson and would die for him, but Daisy has the feeling a lot of what he does goes overlooked. He’d say it doesn’t matter, that it’s his job. But it’s not so much his job as who he is. He was like this even before becoming Director. He was like this with her even she became a SHIELD agent.

A lot of times Daisy has wished she could give stuff back to people who have cared for her, Coulson on top of the list, and has felt frustrated when she someone was in pain or distress and she could do nothing, even though she knew that was a very selfish feeling.

She’s not a good cook so she gets into it, getting distracted and enjoying herself a little too much.

(This is not a vacation, this is an emergency, she reminds herself)

She is not the only one, she discovers, when she turns around to check how Coulson is doing.

The deer seems to be swaying his frame to the rhythm of music.

Daisy smiles. “I didn’t know deers could dance.”

Coulson freezes.

“No, please,” she tells him. “Don’t stop. It’s nice to see you loosen up.” She pauses, feeling she’s not explaining herself. “I don’t mean just since the accident with the Asgardian artifact. That’s understandable. I mean _before_. You know, with the whole Ward’s corpse trying to kill us all and you stupidly thinking it was your fault? It’s nice to see you more relaxed.”

The deer blinks.

“Okay, or don’t dance, Phil,” she says, amused. “I’ll keep cooking.”

But when she next throws a glance over her shoulder she sees Coulson with his eyes closed, not dancing, but softly moving his neck to the tune.

 

+

 

She makes sweet potatoes for him. Something a deer can eat but still with a little twist, like something Coulson might like. She sets the plates in front of the fire, arranging the cushions there as well, so they can both sit down together, Daisy cross-legged, Coulson as best as he can.

The music keeps on playing. It’s a version of “Someone to watch over me” now. Daisy likes this one a lot.

“Is dinner good?” she asks afterwards. He’s literally licking the plate, pretty carelessly. “Hey! You don’t have to look so surprised. I can cook.”

The deer tilts his head apologetically.

“Now dessert,” she announced going to retrieve the bag from the kitchen. 

Coulson didn’t think she was serious, it shows.

“I told you I was finally getting some roasted marshmallows with the boss,” she says.

Coulson looks away, bashful.

“Let it be known that you made me google _Can deer eat marshmallows_?” she tells him.

He tucks his head against his chin - Daisy can totally imagine Coulson doing that, being amused against his will.

She roasts the marshmallows in silence. She feeds them to Coulson and he’s so enthusiastic about them that he ends up accidentally licking Daisy’s fingers for the taste. It’s so weird feeling a deer little tongue touching her skin. It’s even weirder knowing this is Coulson, and getting a flash of how it would feel if it was really Coulson licking her fingers. The whole thing is messing with her.

“Okay, that’s enough,” she says, awkward, setting the rest of the food aside. “I don’t want you to get sick. I don’t want _me_ to get sick.”

They stay like this for a while, sitting in front of fire, listening to the music.

Daisy has never done this with anyone. She wonders if it would have been like this, if Coulson had stayed here with her that time and they had gotten to roast marshmallows. She wonders what would have happened Would he have stayed the night? Would they have talked for hours?

“You must be so tired of listening to my voice all day,” she tells him. She doesn’t dare look at him in the eye. She feels guilty about - it’s not that she _enjoyed_ today, but the companionship of it all, spending the whole time with Coulson, it’s been weirdly comforting, and now she realizes how lonely the last few months have been for her. Coulson is always here for her, she knows, but he had his own struggles and she tried to focus on her team and they kept missing each other. She recovers a bit to face him. “This is not new for me, you know. Living alone in the van, I could go days straight without talking to anyone. So I talked to myself a lot. Not that… talking to you right now it’s not like talking to myself, I didn’t mean… what I meant is I’m used to the sound of my own voice. But it must be pretty annoying to you.”

Coulson’s dark eyes widen.

“I just wish you could be talking to me now,” Daisy says. “Even if it’s just to tell me to shut up.”

That’s unfair, she knows Coulson would never tell her to shut up. It has never happened. Part of her gets the feeling Coulson actually enjoys listening to her talk, but a bigger part of her refuses to believe that kind of stuff.

The deer crawls on his legs, getting closer to Daisy until he is able to rest his head on Daisy’s thigh.

She freezes, again a moment of total weirdness imagining how this would look if Coulson wasn’t a deer right now. He would be sprawled on the floor in his work clothes and leaning his head on Daisy’s lap. It’s strange that him being in animal form makes the whole scene more appropriate somehow.

But she knows what he means by that gesture.

“It’s okay,” Daisy says, running a comforting hand along the animal’s hide. “I’ll keep talking if you want…”

 

+

 

Eventually Coulson falls asleep on her lap and she wants no other choice but to pick him up and carry him into the bedroom.

The deer feels so light in her arms.

Fine-boned and fragile, Daisy is almost scared of dropping him and breaking him.

She imagines doing this with Coulson in his normal state - oh she could, she’s strong. She just can’t imagine in what kind of situation he would allow her to carry him in her arms bridal style.

When Coulson suddenly wakes up, just as Daisy is lowering him onto the end of the bed, he starts in a slight panic, like he doesn’t know where he is.

“It’s okay,” Daisy tells him, touching the top of his head. “You dozed off. You’re in the cabin, with me.”

He still looks around confused and Daisy can see the precise moment when he remembers what has happened to him, when he remembers he’s _inside_ this thing. 

Daisy sits close to him on the bed. Even though the lights are off she can make out his expressions. His eyes are big again and it’s strange but suddenly he looks like he might cry.

(Should she google _Can a deer cry?_ )

She hugs him.

It’s hard hugging an animal, specially because it’s not technically possible for Coulson to hug back.

(he would have

he always hugs back)

Daisy wishes he could but this is about him. Every time they have hugged before it was about him comforting her, or about Daisy throwing herself in his arms for comfort (and one time, relief, and one time gratitude, too). She wraps her arms around the deer’s neck as best she can and wishes she can give Coulson a fraction of the comfort he gives her when he does this.

Make him feel as loved and cared for as she does whenever he hugs her.

(Coulson hugs with his whole being and now he’s like this, unable to react)

“It will be fine,” Daisy says, trying to reassure both of them. “ _Trust me_.”

Coulson rests his head on her arm a moment and then pulls back.

They look at each other.

She touches the animal’s leg, right on the knee joint. Feeling frustrated, because she wishes she could be holding Coulson’s real hand instead, or touching his prosthetic or his shoulder, something like that.

Here, in the half darkness of the room, with only the deer’s eyes lighting up at her, Daisy feels she can talk more honestly.

“I know I can’t know what you’re going through but…” she starts. “I know what it feels like to suddenly wake up in a body that it’s not yours and feels like a prison.”

The deer nods. Or what Daisy has learned is nodding for him.

Then it’s like he remembers something or realizes something, because he starts looking around, then at the floor, like he wants to get off this bed. Daisy takes a moment to catch up.

“It’s that the deer equivalent of _I’ll take the couch_?” she asks. “Because that’s not going to fly.”

She swears the deer looks amused.

Daisy grabs a blanket and throws it over Coulson, tucking him in a bit.

He looks tired.

He also looks like he really wants to know something.

She thinks she knows what he’s asking.

“You’re still Coulson,” she says. “And yeah, I would have invited you to sleep in here if you weren’t a deer. If you were troubled and hurting… yeah, I would have invited you to stay with me.”

She is honest and Coulson seems to know that. Satisfied he rests his head on the bed and closes his eyes, slowly.

“Good night, Phil, “ she says to the darkness, knowing Coulson can’t reply.

Daisy lies back on the bed, hugging her knees and shrinking into a ball to take up the least space, just in case Coulson needs to move during the night.

She suddenly feels exhausted and it only takes a handful of second of her listening to Coulson’s shallow animal breathing for her to sink into sleep as well.

Her fingers still smell of marshmallows.


	4. Chapter 4

Turns out she’s great at fishing.

Okay, she hasn’t fished anything all morning - she keeps asking Coulson if there are fish in the lake of if he’s trolling her and she doesn’t know, the deer had quite the ambiguous expression upon questioning. But she’s great at the preparations. Another sunny day and she spread all the fishing tools over a wooden plank at the edge of the lake. Coulson watched as she prepared the hooks and all that. She had no idea how, but she watched a couple of videos while they had breakfast.

It’s not that bad. She had always thought fishing was for losers or weirdoes but this is actually quite relaxing to her.

The moment is painfully calm.

The whole morning, really. Since she woke up to find that Coulson had moved during the night and now his head was almost pressed to the small of her back. Daisy slipped out of bed and tried not to think about it has having cuddled with a deer. She let him sleep a bit longer as she made breakfast. She decided it was probably not a great idea for a deer to drink coffee but she let Coulson’s fine sense of smell feast on the scent for a moment. It was nice because the world was so quiet - Daisy had never heard such quiet since she was eleven and she was adopted into a family who lived in the country - and they were too.

Then Coulson had a bit of fun (how could a non-human face convey the sheer Coulson-ness of a fond amusement like that?) witnessing how long it took for her to assemble the fishing rod alone. But it was okay because being here feels like they have all the time in the world.

“This is not so bad, right?” she says, hopeful, hoping being here has made Coulson feel slightly better. “I mean, if you have to spend a couple of days a deer this is not the worst place to be, right?”

He knows she is trying to cheer him up. He gets closer, brushing his head against her waist, showing appreciation. He’s a bit touchy this morning, Daisy has noticed; resting his head on her knee during breakfast, when she was feeding him some toast (again the weird moment when he started licking her fingers), following her close outside, letting her runs her hand through the short hair on his neck. She thinks he needs it, that he needs her right now. Human touch to still feel human. She gets that. A little too well.

She thinks she gets the story about the girl and the deer, how it ended up, the story or myth or whatever.

Daisy watches the sun move across the wood. She’s barefoot, the light warming her toes. Coulson is heavy in a good way - still too light, though - and this is strangely domestic. Except Daisy has no idea how domestic feels like.

And this? This is not ideal. It’s still messed up. She’s still willing to do whatever it takes to get Coulson back to his body. But if they couldn’t…

She’d still want to be with him.

Maybe like this, quietly. Keeping each other company. She could do her thing - maybe not so much fighting, maybe she could go back to doing hacking, mostly, so she could spend time with him, and they could live somewhere similiar to this cabin. She would grow old and Coulson would probably become a stag and that could be okay. Like today.

Daisy almost feels guilty for having this kind of comforting fantasies, like it means she has given up on Coulson. It’s only been a couple of days. But she has felt… not happy, but like she knows what happiness with Coulson would feel like.

He has dozed off with his head on her leg. She scratches his long neck and he wakes up, looking at up her.

She gets the story: the girl loved the deer, that’s why she stayed with him.

She would stay with Coulson, even if he were always like this.

“Coulson, I-” she starts, feeling he deserves to know.

But then her phone vibrates.

“It’s a text from Bobbi,” she says. “They found Jane Foster,” she tells Coulson. The deer stands up on his legs immediately. “May is back at the base already too.” She lifts her gaze from the phone to Coulson. “We’re going home.”

 

+

 

“It’s a cloaking device,” Jane Foster says.

Daisy doesn’t want to say I Told You so, specially because it’s Coulson’s life in the balance here. She shifts her weight from one feet to the other, nervously, knowing there’s nothing she can add to the conversation. She and Mack are watching her examine the data.

“I saw these in Asgard,” she says. “But Asgardian biology allows warriors to go back to their real form at will. There’s a symbiosis between them and the particles inside the device. But Agen- Director Coulson is human so.”

“He can’t,” Daisy finishes.

“No,” Jane says. “That’s why we have to jump-start the change back artificially. By making a new device but with an off button.”

“Is that possible?” Mack asks. Then immediately: “Is it _dangerous_?”

Doctor Foster holds his gaze. “Science is always dangerous,” she says, and there’s a bit of excitement in her voice, which Daisy doesn’t approve of. Maybe she is just one of the geniuses, like Jemma, who are really bad at reading the mood of a room.

“Okay, what do you need? When do you start?” Daisy asks, impatient.

 

+

 

After only a few hours Jane and Fitz come up with a working model and they set up the experiment in a sealed chamber inside the lab, in case something goes wrong - they wouldn’t want the whole team suddenly turn into little animals and running all over the place.

Jane said it shouldn’t take long but they had to watch from outside the chamber.

Coulson’s dark eyes look scared, reluctant to let Daisy walk out of the door.

“It’s okay,” she tells him, petting the top of his head, even though everybody is here to see it. “I’ll be right here. I’m never leaving you. Got that?”

The deer bows his head, understanding. Everybody else keeps quiet, letting Daisy take her time.

Jane was right, it only takes a moment.

Daisy was in the common room when the first device exploded so she only heard the commotion. Fitz tells her that silvery burst of light is what’s supposed to happen. Then smoke, which makes Daisy’s stomach drop. Why is there smoke? She looks at Doctor Foster and she seems calm - still, way too excited for the situation, what’s wrong with her? - and Daisy figures this is supposed to happen. She looks closely through the glass, trying to see if there’s been any transformation in the deer.

(what if this makes it worse? right now at least Coulson is still Coulson, with everything that makes him, his sense of humor, his beautiful mind, his warmth. what if all that is gone now?)

When the “mystical” smoke disperses - Daisy swears her heart stops for a moment until she can see - Coulson is back in his body.

As soon as they say it’s safe she runs inside the chamber. Coulson is on the floor, his legs to his chest but he’s very obviously in human form - naked, the stump on his arm visible for the first time in ages, and he seems to have been knocked out by the transformation.

Daisy runs to him, kneels by his side while someone else throws a blanket on him, he’s shivering. She wants to reach out and touch him, make sure it’s really him. She has a moment of panic where she thinks she’s back in his body but still unable to speak.

“Coulson, please, please, say something.”

He opens his mouth slowly, like the movement is alien to him, and then he says her name.

 

+

 

Then he doesn’t talk to her much for the rest of the day.

He spends hours with Jane Foster, understandably, catching up, after he takes a shower and eats some proper meal. And he promises Jane to visit soon so he can see Thor and explain things for himself.

May tells him that Andrew is staying a couple of days in town - off base, Andrew doesn’t like coming by The Playground much anymore, understandably - in case he needs to go see him. Coulson prefers to stay and just phone him. He and Andrew spend ages talking, Coulson holed up in his office.

Daisy gets impatient, fidgety (she’s probably driving Mack mad). She can’t help it: she and Coulson had spent the last two days together, every moment of it. She still has the feeling something might go wrong if she’s not there. It’s absurd and she has to get used to the idea of Coulson being on his own, not with her.

She leaves him some much needed space, because she knows it can’t have been that comfortable, having to spend every waking minute of the day with her.

But she does need to know he’s okay so eventually he knocks on his door.

“Hey,” she says as she comes in.

Coulson gives her a little nod. She wishes he would talk. She wishes Coulson was always talking. She stares at him a moment, barely able to believe she can see his face again. He’s looking at something over in his table.

“Back to work?” she asks.

“No rest for the wicked,” he replies, a bit awkwardly.

She notices that he has his arm in a sling, no new hand yet.

“They have to attach a new dock for the prosthetic and that’s a bit unpleasant,” he explains. for Coulson to use the word _unpleasant_ means that it must be very painful. He only had to go through that once before. “Andrew advise me to wait a couple of days.”

She nods.

“Do you want to talk?” she asks.

“About what?”

She shrugs, suddenly feeling they are not on the same page. Funny, when he was a deer she had no trouble knowing what he was thinking.

“Uh, I don’t know, everything?”

“Thanks for the concern, I understand why you're asking but - I’m fine.”

“Coulson, something really traumatic happened to you and-”

“Yes, but I’m fine now.”

He obviously doesn’t want to talk about it. Daisy gets that. Probably not super healthy but she is not one to talk. They’re very alike in this.

But then there’s the other thing.

“Do you want to talk about anything else?”

Coulson gives her a blank look.

“What else is there to talk about?” he asks.

 

+

 

She doesn’t expect to see more of him today.

She’s glad, really glad and relieved he’s back to normal, even if that means that… well, that he’s back to normal. Normal means not seeing much of each other these days.

So she was already in her pajamas when there’s a knock on the door that night, and though she should have known (who the hell shows up in the middle of the night and knocks on the door? Mack and Jemma text her first) she is completely unprepared to see Coulson standing there when she opens the door.

“Uh- hi.”

It’s still good, _really_ good, to see him in his body. He looks tired - even more so than usually.

“Daisy, I… I _think_ we need to talk,” he says, like he’s not sure.

“I thought you said-”

He looks intensely apologetic about it. Embarrassed, even.

“I’m sorry, it’s been…”

“You were having a hell of a day?”

Coulson half-smiles. “A couple of them.”

“Okay,” Daisy says, returning the smile and letting him in.

He looks around for a moment, studying her room. He’s never been in her quarters before.

“I apologize,” he says. “I wanted for us to talk before but I… I wanted to get my bearings first. I felt like I was still on shaky ground and- _Daisy_?”

To her credit she has been keeping it together really well these past days. So when she starts sobbing quietly in front of Coulson it’s not that surprising. It’s still pretty embarrassing.

Coulson takes a couple of steps towards her and when Daisy looks up they’re shockingly close - shockingly close because it’s no longer the tiny body of a small animal in front of her. 

“What wrong?” he asks, his hands instinctively going to Daisy’s shoulders, voice all worried and high. Of course the fact that now Coulson is able to touch her like this only makes her cry harder.

“I’m sorry,” she says, pulling back and wiping her tears as fast as she can. “There’s nothing wrong. It’s just that… I’ve missed your voice.”

Coulson grabs her head, touching their mouths together.

Daisy sighs against his lips, almost more relieved than anything (well, maybe not _anything_ ), many things about the last couple of days suddenly making sense in her head and her heart.

She makes this unworldly moan-like noise that makes Coulson freeze and pull back.

His eyes search hers.

“That’s good, right?” he asks. “That’s a good sound?”

She nods, chuckling and wiping tears from her cheek. God, what a mess.

“It’s good, it’s very good.”

She brings their mouths together again, wrapping her fingers around Coulson’s nape, feeling the crisp hair there, so different to petting his head when he was a deer.

“Daisy,” he mutters against her kiss. 

She chuckles a bit, drunk with the absurd of the moment. Coulson saying her name _like that_ , while she tries to keep kissing him. 

His hands move up to her hair, pulling him away gently. There’s this kind of light in his eyes she can’t recognize - she knows she has seen it before (one night while they were sitting by a pool, not talking, she thinks) but what is the word for it?

Coulson lets out a sigh as he looks at her closely.

“I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life as a deer,” he tells her. “I was _hopeless_. But you were by my side. And then last night... you told me you’d be by my side even if this hadn’t happened. Daisy… did you mean that?”

For a moment she can’t find her voice. She nods furiously.

“Yes. God, yes, I did. I do.”

She kisses him harder, his hand wrapping tightly around her waist.

But Coulson is not finished, spilling words that take a moment to make sense, eaning wrapped in the constant repetition of her name.

“I wanted to talk to you so badly,” he says, kissing her again. “To tell you so many things. The stuff you were sharing with me.”

“Yes, yes,” Daisy replies, dropping soft kisses over Coulson’s nose, cheeks. “I wanted to hear what you were thinking. It was driving me insane.”

“I wanted to tell you…” he drifts off, breathless, because Daisy is resting her palm right above his heart.. 

“Yes.”

“Amazing, I wanted to tell you you’re amazing. Studying the impact of vibrations like that, finding time to improve your powers like that…” She laughs. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

She shakes her head. “No, no. It’s just - I was terrified. Everything I was doing, I thought it was all wrong. I thought… I thought I was losing you.”

She touches her fingers to his mouth, amazed that she can simply lean and kiss it if she wants. She has always been careful about not jumping into things before, but of course before she didn’t know men could turn into deer and she also didn’t know she could feel joy like this.

“Coulson…”

“Could you…?” she bits her bottom lip, dropping her hands to rest on Coulson’s hips. “Can you just hug me for a moment?”

“Of course.”

He removes his sling so he can hold her with two arms.

Once again Coulson is the one hugging her to comfort her. She promises one day she’ll return the favor. For now she just rests her head on his shoulder for a moment. But she doesn’t linger - there were times where lingering in Coulson’s arms was everything she wanted to do, but interruptions like deathly danger or a mission or Hunter got in the way - because she wants so much more than a hug this time.

(she’s never been this greedy, she swears)

“Please”, she asks him, pulling back. “Let me see you.”

He gives her a slightly confused look and then she rests her hand against the open collar of his black shirt (the one she likes, the one that looked so soft every time he wore it - and now she can check she was right about that).

Coulson understands and takes a step back. He starts unbuttoning his shirt, expertly and swiftly even with one hand.

“Do you-?”

“No, let me,” he tells Daisy. There’s a challenge in his eyes. Like he wants to strip for her.

The shirt hangs open and loose - not the kind of clothes Coulson would wear with his usual undershirt - so Daisy can already see the grey hair on his chest, the big scar cutting through it. She realizes how relieved she is to see it, to see all of him. His skin. She feels like she has missed parts of him she has never seen before.

The jeans are more work but Coulson goes slowly and confidently, pulling both of the pants and the underwear down little by little, then wiggling out of his clothes. She figures she practiced this a lot in the first few weeks after he lost his hand. It happens too quickly for her, even though she knows it’s not really the case - suddenly he’s naked and perfect in front of her.

Daisy can see he’s enjoying it. Maybe “enjoying” is not the word. After three days out of his own body the act of stripping in front of her - someone who loves him, even though they still haven’t said it, he knows she does - must be quite _something_ to him. Peeling his clothes off like shaking off the horrible experience. He holds his breath as Daisy’s eyes hungrily take in various parts of his body, like he needs her approval to feel human again.

(she knows the feeling; she doesn’t think it’s stupid that he needs her now to tell him he’s beautiful and whole

and _he is_ , so it’s not that hard to tell him)

She steps into his space, pressing her body to him. Even through her pajama top she can feel his heart beating against her breast, his hot skin. Coulson closes his eyes and lets out a tiny whimper when Daisy runs her hands down his arms.

She kisses his neck, using her teeth on him until his whimper becomes an aroused groan.

She looks down between them, seeing he’s half-hard already. 

“Have you…? Since you _came back_?”

“It’s been only a few hours,” he replies. Daisy holds his gaze. “No.”

“Can I?”

She hears him more than sees him swallow.

“Yes,” he says.

Daisy keeps their eyes locked as she lowers her hand and wraps her fingers around his erection. Coulson hisses a bit at the first moment of contact, closing his eyes. When he opens them again the pupils are blown and his face just exudes heat.

“Fuck, Daisy,” he mutters.

She wants to say something witty or funny or charming. But that she can’t, struck silent just like Coulson when he was a deer. She twists her fingers carefully, giving his cock a first, long stroke. She can feel his vibrations tremble before his whole body does. It’s strange to be able to feel these things but she wonders if she has ever affected another human being so much before.

She grabs his shoulder and turns him around and backs him against the bed. She keeps her hand around his dick, like a lifeline between them as she sits him against the wall, straddling his legs under her. She likes that he is completely naked and she is, for the most part, completely clothed. Because this, right now, is about him, not her.

Coulson seems to be wondering the same.

“Should we-?”

“Shh,” she tells him. “There’ll be time for that.”

She kisses him hard, his head bumping against the wall, their teeth meet, Daisy laughs a moment through the kissing.

Coulson, on the other hand is panting desperately, his cock throbbing in her hand. She loves the view.

“You’re gorgeous,” she says, kissing the line of his neck, his firm shoulder, the light freckles no one could see unless you’re as close to them as she is right now. “Did you even know?” she asks, lowering her mouth to the inside of his arm, softer than the rest of him. “How gorgeous you are…”

(did anyone ever tell him before? she hopes many people have told him before, but she thinks it matters that she tells him _now_ tonight, after everything)

Daisy kisses scars she will demand the story of later, while Coulson rolls his hips against her fingers. She draws the line of his lips with two fingers, then pushes them inside her mouth. Coulson quickly closes his lips around them. Daisy remembers when him-as-a-deer licked her fingers as she was giving him food and the strange, uncomfortable flash she had of what it would look like if Coulson, in his human body and with his human mouth and tongue, were to lick her fingers. Well, this is how it looks like. It’s really hot. Daisy herself moans a bit when she pulls her fingers out almost completely and Coulson’s teeth scrape her skin, right before she pushes in again. Instinctively she squeezes her other hand and Coulson lets out a moan a pitch higher than hers.

She smiles and picks up the pace, making him thrust his hips quicker against her hand, taking her fingers out of his mouth and replacing them with her tongue.

“Daisy,” he whimpers against her lips. “You’re too fast.”

She gives him a long kiss again.

“No,” she says, stopping and just holding his cock between her fingers. “I think we’ve been way too slow.”

Coulson nods furiously, digging his fingers into the fabric of her pajama pants, throwing his other arm around his waist to pull her closer. She rests one hand on his shoulder, digging her knees and balancing herself, starting again with long, tight strokes.

He closes his eyes, holding on to her tighter.

“Hey, stay with me,” she says, wanting to see his eyes as she makes him come.

Coulson nods and focuses, though it’s obviously a struggle at this point (Daisy can’t say she’s unhappy about _that_ ).

His eyes are so dark and beautiful and they get darker and more beautiful when he spills over Daisy’s hand, just before they close, and it finishes, and everything else begins.

 

+

 

“I’m not asleep,” he says, when Daisy has just comfortably shifted on her side, keeping one arm around his middle.

“You should be,” she tells him. “You have some rest to catch up with.”

He makes a non-committal noise. His eyelids look heavy, eyes half crossed. Daisy moves her head along the pillow, gets closer. Coulson has really pretty eyelashes, she thinks.

Her room now smells like him and sex and happiness and this is about around the time when Daisy is used to losing everything. But that's not going to happen this time. She knows.

“Remember when we were fishing this morning?” he suddenly asks.

“I was fishing,” she replies. “And I wasn’t fishing at all.”

He smiles. “When we were quiet for a long time…”

“Yeah.”

“The sun was starting to come down on us and it was nice out there. It was calm. I thought…” he pauses. “I thought it might not have been so bad, if I had to stay like that for longer.”

Daisy looks closely into his eyes. It’s not like they have made any confession or anything (he did say she was amazing, and she did tell him he was gorgeous).

“I was thinking the same,” she says, quietly.

His eyes widen a bit, discreetly, as if he can’t quite believe she’s telling the truth.

“Really?”

Daisy nods. “Really.”

She presses her fingertips across his collarbone and leans over to kiss him. It feels a bit like their first kiss, and Daisy takes her time, exploring, brushing her lips slowly against his, because in the rush of everything that came before she didn’t have time to commit this to memory, the softness and warmth of his body, the faint taste of pennies and toothpaste when she kisses him. She scrapes her nails up his neck and chin, feeling the stubble, recalling how it felt to have it scratching the inside of her legs when Coulson went down on her minutes before. Obedient he lets her tip his head back for better access, Daisy pressing her tongue against the roof of his mouth as she swallows Coulson’s moans. 

After a while she pulls back, settling, and looking at his now-dark-pink lips, satisfied with her job.

“I’m glad we waited until you recovered your body to do this,” she says.

“Oh god…”

She laughs.

“It’s fine. Our lives are weird. This is… this is almost normal.”

“I turned into a deer. And then I found out I was in love with you. I don’t know what’s weirder.”

“I’m an Inhuman. Technically, it’s still interspecies sex.”

He smiles tenderly at her, like he knows the joke hides a very real worry on her part. Because she thinks about the future. It’s Coulson, you can’t exactly do this and not think about the future with him.

Coulson reaches his right hand over his body and touches Daisy’s hair. They spent a moment like that, with him stroking her hair.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asks.

Coulson settles on his back, getting comfortable.

“If it’s not too hard. I’ve had a couple of trying days I don’t know if you heard.”

“Cute,” she teases. “Did you wonder why a very young deer? Why not a full grown stag? Even if magic is at play, that made no sense to me.”

“It did to me, once I thought about it. And I had some time to think about it.” Daisy moves even closer, giving him a questioning look. “Because it’s magic and from what I know of Asgardian magic it has a meaning. This wasn’t my first up-close experience.”

“Loki’s staff,” Daisy says.

He nods. “That’s what got me thinking. When Director Fury brought me back to life the GH drug regenerated my heart. You could say I grew a new heart. In a way, my heart is really young, three years old.”

“So you have the heart of baby deer, that’s why,” Daisy says, smiling at him and closing her fingers over the scar on his chest.

“It seems to be the case,” he says, covering her hand with his.

She has a million questions for him, about what he felt this last couple of days, but Coulson will talk to her if he wants to, and when he’s ready.

“Thank you,” he tells her, all of the sudden.

Daisy feels her cheeks getting hot.

“Whatever for?” she asks.

“You took care of me,” he tells her. Then, less confident. “I felt cared for. And I don’t re - it hasn’t…” he pauses, looking overwhelmed. “Just thank you.”

“Any time,” Daisy replies, honestly. Knowing Coulson would have done exactly the same for her.

She props herself on one elbow and kisses Coulson’s temple.

“I know our lives are a bit complicated,” she says. He gives her an understanding smile. “But we can still go back and have some marshmallows together from time to time.”

Coulson nods. “Good, because I have a lot to say about your roasting technique.”

Daisy grins. “I bet you do.”

They kiss again. 

She has been plagued by horrible nightmares for two nights, but she thinks tonight she will sleep peacefully. Or maybe even dream of fairytales where deer become human and girls fall in love.

They kiss again. Daisy keeps her hand over his heart, protecting the young, tender animal inside.


End file.
